Deborah Sweeney
, ContributorWest Coast CEO who knows small business and entrepreneurs.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Marty Metro, founder and CEO of UsedCardboardBoxes.com

Towards the end of June, I had the pleasure of getting to interview Beverly Kennedy, general manager for Ink from Chase, to chat about Mission: Small Business. To refresh your memory (and some of mine in the process) Mission: Small Business was a program designed to provide 12 small businesses funding across the United States through a grant worth $250,000 apiece for a total of $3 million altogether.

Sponsored by Chase and LivingSocial, 70,000 businesses participated, 3.1 million consumers voted, and 12 small businesses were picked and rewarded $250,000 each... with one of those businesses being UsedCardboardBoxes.com, owned by CEO Marty Metro, a Los Angeles local and fellow friend of mine! In between Marty's and my own busy schedules, I managed to sit down with him for a moment to discuss what it felt like to win the grant from Mission: Small Business, what it means to work in the cardboard box industry, and what inspires him the most when it comes to his business.

Deborah Sweeney: Can you describe what your business does in 140 characters or less?

Marty Metro:UCB buys and sells quality USED boxes. Buying from major US manufacturers, as they unpack, selling to large companies and consumers.

DS: What is the mission of usedcardboardboxes.com?

MM: UsedCardboardBoxes.com (UCB) is a national logistics firm that buys quality USED boxes from large US manufacturers. We are able to pay more than both traditional OCC recyclers and local "box brokers" because we operate a national marketplace that sells the boxes as boxes (not scrap cardboard). We purchase under contract, via tractor trailerload. Whether we live load, drop trailers and/or place our own staff on the client's site, our purchasing programs streamline the process and put all relevant sustainability info at our client's fingertips, via our proprietary online portal. Once we receive the boxes, UCB does one of the following:

1. Make low-cost, eco-friendly moving kits! We sell kits online and deliver via one of our 8 regional distribution centers and deliver to any residential address in the US in just 1-2 business days.

2. Palletize the boxes for sale to other companies looking for low-cost, eco-friendly shipping solutions. We sell quality used boxes to many of the big box retailers, discount chains, thrift organizations and recyclers.

3. Or, per our clients' strict quality control specs, we return the boxes back to the original vendor for reuse! Many of our clients get their supplies in the same boxes from the vendors, over and over again, on a daily basis. Instead of recycling all those boxes (like a traditional recycler does), UCB buys, sorts, inspects and returns those boxes back to the vendors to be re-filled with more supplies! UCB pays our clients more than recycling companies can, and we charge the supplier less than the cost of a new box! We handle all the freight, sorting, logistics issues, etc.

Because UCB develops our own proprietary software system, every box we purchase is tracked and reported online in real-time. All truckloads are tracked and any of our clients can view our portal and pull reports by commodity, SKU, weight, date, payment status, and more. Because it's all managed online and through UCB, we can offer the same service to any/all of our client’s locations, whereas most recycling firms are local to a specific plant. We can provide multi-plant aggregated reports, so there is no need for multiple spreadsheets, consolidations, emailed reports, etc. It's all available online and can be used to send reports to local municipalities or customers.